Challenge friends to a casual wager with FriendBet

The UK is becoming popular place to base social gambling services. Smarkets has been around for a while and we more recently profiled Betable. Joining them from this week is a new entrant, FriendBet.

As its name suggests, FriendBet is about betting against friends rather than bookmakers. The site curates a list of sport events, news stories and TV shows to bet against and users can then choose a group of friends to bet on the result with.

While Smarkets sets itself up as a social “Betting exchange” and Betable has a “Bet with your friends on anything” approach, FriendBet is somewhere between the two. It offers traditional betting subjects but focuses on small groups of self-organising friends. Co-founder and CEO Timothée Luneau says “We target casual betters, using Friendbet to put their money where their mouth is. We worked a lot on the interface to make it very quick and understandable to place a bet and challenge friends.”

London-based FriendBet operates in the UK and France. Luneau tells us that the service is set to be enhanced with improved social features and a broader range of betting options in future. The startup, which has raised €650,000 from French and British private investors, is currently in the process of signing partnerships with amateur football and rugby clubs to increase its userbase.

Martin Bryant Editor-in-Chief at The Next Web. You can find him on Twitter, subscribe to him on Facebook, circle him on Google+ and visit his personal site. He's based in Manchester, UK and has a thing for quirky American music and Japanese video games.